Dirty Thirty: Reflecting on opening night of racing as Adams County Speedway hopes to dodge raindrops this week

QUINCY — Here are this week’s Dirty Thirty dirt-track thoughts. You now the drill — the usual five reflections per class, plus five miscellaneous meanderings — all involving Adams County Speedway:

Modifieds

• Defending series champ Austen Becerra will be trying to dig out of a big points hole following his seventh-place feature finish the first week of the season. Becerra finds himself 27 points in back of some talented rivals in what should be a dynamite class this summer. 

• It will be interesting to see just how powerful that No. 77D belonging to Drake Stevenson might be. He blew a tire on opening night when he was dominating the feature.

• Shawn Deering will likely make his 2023 debut Sunday night and will immediately add another contender to this strong mix.

• Speaking of Deering, only four-time series champ Dave Wietholder has earned more track points since the UMP mod class debuted in 2209. Wietholder started the season with 10,666 and Deering 8,694.

• I think the budding Becerra-Wietholder rivalry in the mods may, at some point this season, equal some of the great mod duels over the past 25 years. Remember Hank DeLonjay and Sam Burgtorf? How about Michael Long and Ryan Meyer? Or Tony Dunker and Wyatt Lantz? 

Sport mods

• Tanner Klingele’s No. 1 all-time ranking in the sport mods is a testament to his overall body of work. Klingele has yet to win a sport mod title, but has been with the class since its inception and has finished runner-up in the points race four times.

• One of the toughest records to break at the track is going to be the most sport mod features won in a season. Tony Dunker, who is now retired, won 15 in 2012 and 13 in 2013. No other series hotshoe has won more than eight in a season since the series debuted in 2011. The overall balance in the sport mod division will likely protect Dunker’s record for the foreseeable future. Nine different drivers won main events in 2022.

• If Kyler Girard can win a second straight feature Sunday night, it would be the first back-to-backer by a series regular since August 2019. Austen Becerra won the final two features a year ago but was just “visiting” the sport mods (he’s primarily a modified driver now). Ironically, it was Becerra who had gone back-to-back in late 2019 when he was still a sport mod regular.

• Nine of last year’s top 10 drivers are back in the fold. The only one missing is ninth-place Clean Livin’ Joe Bliven, who has retired.

• First-year Adams County Speedway director of racing Nathan Bringer was the 2016 series champion. Bringer outlasted Brandon Lennox by one point for his title, and then the following year Lennox edged Klingele by one point for the championship.

Crate late models

• Denny Woodworth’s next victory will be his 50th in a crate late at the Bullring. And his next feature win will be his 25th. 

• Look for Tommy Elston to be the bounce-back driver of the week after that disappointing ninth-place feature finish on opening night.

• Most of the preseason title talk has expectedly centered around Woodworth, Elston and Sam Halstead, but don’t overlook Braden Bilger. That runner-up feature finish to Woodworth on April 23 might be a sign of things to come this summer.

• It should be a great rookie of the year race this season between Christian Miles and Austin Poage. Miles is making the jump from karting, while Poage spent last season in a sport mod. Poage was one of the most improved drivers in all of the classes during the second half of 2022.

• Since the inception of the crate lates in 2017, Woodworth (410) and Elston (307) have led a combined 717 feature laps. No other driver has been in front for more than 36 laps.

Stock cars

• One of the longest-standing records at the track is Chris Wibbell’s mark for stock car feature laps led — 162 in 2008, the first year for the series. That was Wibbell’s lone season as a regular at the Bullring. Robert Cottom was the 2022 leader with 105.

• Jake Powers is two overall wins away from becoming the seventh series driver to reach 20 career victories. Abe Huls (112) is the career leader, but the Carthage driver has not raced regularly in Quincy since winning three titles in a four-year span between 2013 to 2016.

• Five of last year’s top 10 finishers in points were absent the first week of the season, including defending champ Rudy Zaragoza.

• Steve Grotz, who was fifth in points and led the series in heat wins (8) a year ago, is expected to make his 20223 debut Sunday. Grotz is also in charge of track prep at the Bullring, which limits his racing at times.

• One of the stock drivers to watch early could be Sage Martin, who was a rookie in 2022 and  finished sixth in points. Martin was third in the first feature of the season.

4-Cylinders

• Another developing rivalry to keep an eye on this season is defending series champ Jeffrey DeLonjay and 2022 runner-up Jimmy Dutlinger. Unless I miss my guess, there will be some paint traded more than once as the season evolves. 

• The 4-Cylinders are one of the sport’s rapidly growing series, which was underlined a year ago at Quincy. A whopping 74 different 4-Cylinder drivers raced at Quincy, a figure that easily the most of any of the five weekly series.

• Three-time series champ Kim Abbott, one of the steadiest drivers in any of the track’s five series, led all drivers in all divisions in 2022 with 17 top-10 finishes. She was third in her first feature of the season. 

• Speaking of Abbott, she leads the series in career money earned with $18,340. She established a series record a year ago when she won $7,280.

• It was good to see Barry Taft back at the Bullring on opening night. Taft was arguably the most dominating driver in any series during 2018 and part of 2019, winning 15 of a possible 24 features, including four in a row at one point. 

Miscellaneous

• Adams County Speedway tries again Sunday for its second week of action. Hopefully, the wet weather will hold off. Temperatures are forecast to be in the 80s. There have already been more rainouts (3) this year than during the entire 2022 season.

• There was some discussion back on April 23 — the only night we’ve had any racing at the Bullring — on what the single-night record might be for total yellow flags. That was because there were 39 overall caution flags that night, which was kind of expected. Opening night normally sees a lot of bump and runs on the .29-mile dirt track. The closest I could come to answering that inquiry was what specific class has had the most yellows since such things started being tracked about 20 years ago. On Sept. 23, 2014, there were 23 caution flags for the sports mods. That’s one of two instances when there were 20 or more yellows for one class. The other involved the modifieds, which were flagged 20 times on April 29, 2007.

• Apparently, Kenny Wallace’s plans to be a semi-regular at the Bullring have changed. The former NASCAR Cup driver, who finished third in 2022 mod points at Quincy, has opted to cut back his dirt racing and will be doing more TV work as an analyst for NASCAR events. Hopefully, he can make the trip north from St. Louis at least a few times this summer. Whenever Wallace is in the Bullring pits it’s an event.

• Start planning now. The UMP Hell Tour will be in town June 28. That’s a Wednesday night. Bobby Pierce won last year’s late model extravaganza, his first Hell Tour win in Quincy since 2016. The Hell Tour’s first appearance at the Bullring was in 2006.

• The track’s other major special will be July 2 when the MLRA cars come to town, which is the Sunday following the Hell Tour date. That might wind up being the biggest week of racing at 8000 Broadway in decades.